About Us

Our program is comprised of passionate students committed to improving lives abroad through creative and sustainable engineering solutions.

The Columbia University chapter of Engineers Without Borders aims to address the problems facing people
both locally and overseas by leveraging the skills, talents, and passions of Columbia University
students and the sponsorships formed with our organization. Our members come from many different
arts, sciences, and engineering backgrounds, who collectively share a desire to do meaningful
work and make a difference.

The chapter currently consists of three programs in Ghana, Uganda, and Morocco.
The Ghana program,
which started in 2004, used to work in the semi-urban town of Sakyikrom but
now focuses on water management in the farming community of Obodan. In 2008,
the Uganda program was
established to install a Multi-Function Energy Platform in the Soroti region.
The Morocco program, which began in 2011, finished building a bridge
in the rural community of Ait Bayoud in June 2013 and is now and is now working
on providing safe and easily accessible drinking water directly to the communities
of Izgouaren and Ilguiloda through a water sourcing and distribution system.
Each project draws from the skills of its members to provide technical solutions to worldwide
problems.

Bridge Project

Ait Bayoud, a rural Moroccan community in the Essaouira region,
experiences seasonal flooding of its central Tagawowt river that disrupts access to the local health clinic, school, and markets for hundreds of residents.

The Morocco program of Columbia's EWB-USA chapter began in 2011 when Nina Morency-Brassard, a Columbia alumna and Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Ait Bayoud, reached out to our chapter with a collaborative project proposal.

To address the flooding of the Tagawowt river, the community suggested a bridge project to EWB-USA CU so
that the river could be safely and consistently crossed during the rainy season. Along with professional
structural engineers, various Peace Corps volunteers, and a host of community leaders and workers in Ait
Bayoud, the students of the Morocco project have worked to fund, design, and source materials for the
implementation of a 210ft suspension footbridge.

In the summer of 2011 and the winter of 2012, two assessment teams gathered technical data and determined
a bridge site. In the summer of 2012, implementation of the bridge began. Over the course of 6 weeks, our
team of students and professional mentors worked alongside local workers in Ait Bayoud to clear and prepare
the bridge sites, mix and pour the concrete foundations and towers, and install each of the bridge's main
cables. In the winter of 2013, we sent a team to assess the state of the bridge, and in the summer we sent
two final project teams. They tensioned the bridge cables, installed decking, and completed the project.
Following the bridge’s completion in June 2013, CU-EWB Morocco has maintained and improved the completed
footbridge, performing extensive inspections every six months and successfully pre-tensioning a new rope
in the summer of 2017. Teams have recently focused on fully transitioning ownership and maintenance of
the bridge to the community, creating a useful picture-based guide and facilitating community-led bridge
inspections.

Water Project

The members of Izgouaren, one of a series of dwars or neighborhood
clusters that make up Ait Bayoud, spend up to 4 hours a day walking to get water.

While assessing the community of Ait Bayoud during her Peace Corps Service, Nina
noticed another pressing issue to the quality of life.

Ait Bayoud consists of a series of dwars, or neighborhood clusters, that are staggered along the river.
Izgouaren, a dwar isolated on a raised plateau, suffers from limited access to water. Every day,
families walk back and forth down to the river to gather water from a nearby spring, spending about an
hour per trip and making up to 3 trips a day.

To address this issue, a team consisting of Columbia students as well as Peace Corps Volunteers
visited Izgouaren in January 2014 and began to assess the dwar's needs, the river conditions, and
Ait Bayoud's current water sourcing status. We sent one additional assessment travel team in the summer
of 2014 to measure the flow rate of multiple springs and the river near Izgouaren, to determine a
piping path to transport water to the dwars, and to perform water quality tests on the sources of water.
Using the information collected during the two assessment trips, the winter 2015 team returned and
successfully constructed a shallow well along the river.

Since then, we have installed 1,500 meters of piping out of the total 3,200 meters needed to complete the
pipeline. In the past few trips our teams have focused on building a temporary water distribution site,
along with testing both the pipes that we have laid down so far and the water quality. We are planning to
implement 6 km of HDPE piping this summer to replace the originally installed galvanized steel piping due
to leakage. Additionally, we are planning to extend the power line to the well site and install solar panels
this summer, so hopefully, there will be water running all the way to the communities by the end of August.

Updates

Our work takes place both on-site in Ait Bayoud and back home in New York. Check out our updates to see what we've been up to!